Category Archives: Political Philosophy

Updated: Loser Lindsey G. Pummeled By Paul

Constitution, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

I’ve said it before, the stupid party needs not a bigger tent, but a giant tin-foil hat. Duly, Lindsey Graham attacks Mr. Constitution, Rep. Ron Paul, by vowing to a booing town-hall gathering to rescue the GOP from white gentlemen like Paul (words you’d expect from the Party of Lincoln), and to continue shedding blood in futile, unconstitutional wars.

To which Ron Paul replied: “What does Graham have against the Constitutions?” Of course, Graham embodies everything that is wicked about the Republican Party.

Update: Glenn Beck gives it to Graham too: pro amnesty, for Sotomayor, for stimulus package; signed climate-change bill…

Beating Back The Feds

Constitution, Federalism, Political Philosophy, States' Rights

“States across the country are rediscovering and reasserting the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

“Quaint, I know, but to the federal government were delegated only limited and enumerated powers (Article I, Section 8): 17 to be precise. Most everything it does these days is extra-constitutional.”

The latest States’ Rights push-back (via the New York Times):

“In more than a dozen statehouses across the country, a small but growing group of lawmakers is pressing for state constitutional amendments that would outlaw a crucial element of the health care plans under discussion in Washington: the requirement that everyone buy insurance or pay a penalty.”

“Approval of the measures, the lawmakers suggest, would set off a legal battle over the rights of states versus the reach of federal power — an issue that is, for some, central to the current health care debate but also one that has tentacles stretching into a broad range of other matters, including education and drug policy.”

Update III: Middle America Or Meathead’s America?

America, BAB's A List, Christian Right, Human Accomplishment, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Paleoconservatism, Palestinian Authority, Political Philosophy, Republicans, The State, Welfare

THE EXCERPT is from “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, my new WND.COM column, now (Sept. 12) on Taki’s:

“Given the perpetual parade of ‘intellectuals’ who are not intelligent in our media — Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the ‘parrot press’ — I don’t expect you to be familiar with political philosopher Paul E. Gottfried. Nevertheless, Paul (he’s a friend) is one of the most important intellectuals in America.”

“Historian Eugene Genovese calls Paul incorruptible, ‘an American intellectual of superior talent.’ Author and historian John Lukacs praises Professor Gottfried as ‘a very profound thinker.’ And L. Brent Bozell III salutes his ‘amazing intellectual courage’ — courage in the face of the malign, philistine forces of the liberal and neoconservative mainstream.”

Over the years, I’ve interviewed Professor Gottfried pursuant to the publication of his many books. I do so again on the occasion of the publication of “Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.”

READ THE interview, “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, now on WND.COM. And on Taki’s Magazine on the weekend.

Update I (Sept. 11): Please note that the always-genial and brutally candid Paul Gottfried has replied to his detractors in the Comments Section. Some of the critics have been quite harsh (and this forum is moderated).

Update II: Randy, the war on Iraq is not going to be adjudicated again here, not ever. I chronicled the invasion of Iraq at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce that war crime. The case is closed! Neoconservative ideologues stand in the dock for aiding and abetting a war crime. Any reader is welcome to read my article archive on the topic (search the blog archives too). I can well imagine that many ideologues who supported the war urgently need to make peace with their maker, or consciences, for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude.

Update III (Sept. 12): Hayim, one doesn’t have to endorse everything Paul Gottfried writes or espouses to appreciate his contribution and steadfast principles. As someone who is ostracized by even more factions than Paul, I recognize the strength of character it takes to resist group pressure to conform and compromise one’s notion of right and wrong.

As to the article you cited, and which I skimmed: I have quoted Dershowitz on Israel and find his commentary worthwhile. I do not appreciate the dichotomy—or hypocrisy—the likes of Dershowitz evince in that they are hard-core rightists when it comes to Israel’s right to preserve its ethnic identity. But anyone arguing that the preservation of the historical America is essential to the preservation of freedom itself is a racist in Dershowitz’ books. That aspect of the Jewish Diaspora sickens me. Israelis are nothing like these American Jews.

In “Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians,” I expressed exactly what I thought of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Norman Finkelstein I include among “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of Jewish giants. Noam Chomsky (‘The Godfather’), Steven and Hillary Rose … Joel Kovel, Tanya Reinhart in Tel Aviv, and Michael Cohen in Swansea—these are but a few of the new anti-Semitism’s leading Jewish lights.”

Where I agree with Paul is in his assertion that there is among the anointed Jewish leadership a crass abuse of “the Holocaust for propagandistic purposes.” No doubt about it. And it’s repulsive. To the extend Finkelstein exposes this, to that extent he makes a valid point. The Holocaust industry makes even me turn away from a catastrophe that has truncated my own family tree.

I also find the premise of the Daniel Goldhagen book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, appalling.

I think that on the whole Joan Peterson’s book is pretty good. If there are a few factual problems—and I don’t know that there are—they serve in this context as a fig leaf for those who would deny the central truth about the Jewish settlement of Israel:

“The territory within which the State of Israel was established did not form part of any larger state that opposed its creation. The territory was, moreover, one where Jews formed a majority on land they had purchased legitimately.”

Unanimously, this Jewish majority issued a declaration of independence promising that ‘the State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,’ not for the benefit of mankind. They promised that the country would ‘be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel”; that it would ‘ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,’ and ‘safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

It is a joke to claim, as the anti-Israel right does, that Israel doesn’t respect the rights of all its inhabitants, Arabs included. Let the Raimondos of this world—hopefully there is only one of his kind—go live/or vacation in the Palestinian Authority.

Above all, it is undeniable that Arabs had trashed the Holy Land throughout their occupation of the place. It took Jews to dry the swamps—they died in droves of malaria doing so—to plant orchards, start industries, and generally build from a howling wilderness a prosperous country.

You won’t find me lamenting that wonderful achievement.

Cooperation, Not Communism

Capitalism, Communism, Free Markets, Intellectual Property Rights, Liberty, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Socialism, Technology

On my mind is another of Glenn Beck’s frequently made errors. Whenever Beck sends out a free copy of his newsletter, he declares “provocatively” that “Glenn has succumbed to socialism.” Avail yourself of the product of Glenn’s momentary insanity, he will exhort (referring to himself in the third person), and sign up for this free, socialistic service. This is a good opportunity to clarify what socialism really is, for unless you understand that there can be no socialism without state coercion, why, then, you comprehend very little about the dread socialism—as little as conservatives and Republicans do.

Indeed too many people conflate the voluntary provision of a free service with socialism. Voluntary cooperation, even absent remuneration, is never socialism. Glenn Beck seems to think that anything free is socialism. Not so. A Kibbutz—Israeli communal living—is a voluntary socialistic arrangement, which, if you prize freedom, is as good as any arrangement people want to enter that is coercion free. Kibbutzim are often economically viable arrangements. Perhaps this is because people are there by choice and by belief.

Thus, an open source software project, worked on voluntarily by scores of developers across the globe, is not socialism. Although volumes have been written on the pros and cons of open source versus proprietary software, the proof is in the pudding: Although free, open source is often as good as software that costs serious money.

I do not want to veer into the copyright debate. However, I still stand by my writing on the topic. “KAZAA,” for example, was engaged in voluntary exchange; “THE COPYRIGHT CARTEL” was the fascistic attempt to infringe on this voluntary exchange—and on tangible property not its own. But let’s leave this debate right now.